


The Prestige

by Tanachvil



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, First Time, Lucius is a dick and a manipulative bastard, Mildly Dubious Consent, Older Man/Younger Woman, also very vain, convenient Time Turner shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-11 21:09:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/803289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanachvil/pseuds/Tanachvil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, Hermione just wants to spend two weeks with her parents and her books, recovering and trying to cope with what happened, including the fact that Lucius Malfoy managed to avoid Azkaban and no one believes her or the others about that night at the Ministry of Magic.<br/>Voldemort is back and now the Minister has to face it, but the Deatheaters are even a bigger threat now that their Lord has revealed himself.<br/>Hermione knows that she'll have to fight, she just doesn't know what her role will be in the upcoming war. She's about to find out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act One - The Pledge

 

_Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts._

_The first part is called "The Pledge"._

_The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal._

_But of course... it probably isn't._

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Act One: The Pledge.**

 

 

“A bet, Nott?”

 

Lucius walked by the family portrait gallery at a bored pace. The faces that followed him from the frames wore the same sly, arrogant expression, passed through generations of Malfoys.

 

“And what kind of bet, exactly? Your amusements are seldom innocent and more rarely wise. You know perfectly well that we have to be very cautious. Every Auror in the Ministry is ready to pitch into us at our first little mistake.”

 

“Shall I gather that you, my good friend, are... afraid?” Frowning slightly, not without a touch of irony, Nott poured himself another glass of the elfic wine they were drinking and then waited for Lucius to react to his insinuation.

 

“Afraid? No, I'm not afraid, I'm careful. You see, unlike you, I _know_ how to be cautious and I have no desire to spend some time in Azkaban again, proving that Potter's ramblings have some sort of foundation or that his friends are more than a bunch of overrated kids and fools.”

 

“Very well, Lucius. Perhaps what I have in mind is indeed too risky, given our precarious situation.”

 

“Do you plan on giving me an explanation some time soon, or are you going to bore me further with your hints and taunts? Come on, what about this bet? Let's see what you have devised.”

 

Nott put down his glass on the rosewood table and then stood up, letting his gaze wander to the window. Below, on the grounds of the Manor's garden, his son and Draco were passing by, broomsticks in hand, coming back from a flight.

 

“Oh, well, it's something very simple, Lucius, the chance to have a little fun and perhaps to get rid of one of those annoying kids... but I'm not sure it's something possible, even for you.”

 

 ***

  
The world knew few witches more annoying than Hermione Granger, this was true. Not even her friend Potter or the obnoxious Albus Dumbledore; no, there was no one in the whole world that Lucius Mafoy found as irritating as the mudblood know-it-all who dared to put herself on the same level as someone like his son.

 

Potter was dangerous and pesky, Dumbledore was powerful and very arrogant, but Granger... A mudblood so insolent and bold, so highly regarded by her teachers, and so tangled up, as much as Potter, in every attempt to interfere in the Dark Lord's plans that he was the living symbol of everything he despised the most.

To mess up with the girl's life sounded like something very interesting and positively entertaining. 

Nott was not known for his subtlety but this time, Lucius had to admit there was something intriguing in his idea.  
Inspiration, after all, could strike anyone.  
A bet, a game, something that could bring to them so much more than simple amusement. 

Lucius sneered, considering the terms of the bet, and looked back to all the occasions when that hateful gang of brats, halfbloods and mongrels had sabotaged his plans and made his son's life miserable.  
  
This was the chance to turn the tables. Without Miss Know-it-all to guide them, the little idiots would soon end up dead by their own hands. Fortune, after all, was an inconstant lover.

Yes, this was going to be useful.

 

The rules of the game were quite simple. Nott bet that Lucius could not hurt sweet toothy little Granger following the appointed terms. He had to subjugate her, tame her, deceive her, make her trust him so much that she would question her own loyalty, but it was far too simple with the use of magic. Therefore he could not have her tortured or under the Imperius curse, no shortcuts and no obvious solution, only pure manipulation.

“Far too easy.” He smiled at his reflecion in the mirror, the plan already setting itself ready in his mind.

 

 

***

  
  
Summer holidays had always been a strange time since Hermione found out she was a witch. It was nice to spend some time with her family, with the muggle parents who could forget, for a while, about all those things they could not understand and enjoy their little girl's company, bringing her somewhere she could relax and have fun, away from her books and all the dangers of the magical world.

Of course, her idea of a relaxing vacation did not involve staying away from books and her mother had rolled her eyes when she'd found out how much reading material Hermione had brought with her.

They reached a compromise when they agreed that reading and studying at the beach was not the smartest idea and Hermione was satisfied when she bargained for the complete possession of the little conservatory of the cottage they rented for the holidays.

It was a sunroom, designed to be a place to play cards and have some drinks in the fresh and lazy evenings of Cornwall, but Hermione had immediately transformed it in her private study and independent kingdom. 

The floral curtains on the large french windows could be closed, so that nobody could peek through them, and a small kitchenette provided all the tea she needed when studying and reading until she fell asleep on the couch.

 

In spite of her initial protest, she had to admit that it really was nice to sunbathe lazyly while her mother read _The Sun_ under the beach umbrella and her father spread an enormous amount of sunscreen on his nose.   
It was nice to see them so untroubled and have the chance to have dinner with them, then go for an ice cream with the muggle girls from the beach. In the evenings she enjoyed the summer breeze through the french windows of the conservatory, with a book in her hands and no need to go to sleep anytime soon.

It was most definitely a holiday, but Hermione could not relax completely, not with the memory of what had happened just a few weeks before.

 

Voldemort's return, the battle of the Ministry, and Sirius' death all looked like something absurd, unthinkable, something that three months before she could not have believed could happen. 

She had written to Harry, or she had tried more than once, but she couldn't find something sensible to write or the right words to express it.

Ron had, incredibly, found time to write to her. 

When she had seen the owl, she had been so surprised that it made her mum worried about which kind of news the letter was bringing. It was not bad news, thankfully, just interesting, like the year before, when Ron had invited her to Grimmauld Place.

 _The Wealseys are moving for the summer -_ he had written her last year _\- you are invited to join us, since we are going to visit Padfoot's new kennel ._  

 _Very, very subtle_ , Ron, she thought back then, not without worry, because if someone had intercepted that owl, a lot of suspicions could have been awoken. No one was officially aware that Sirius Black was an animagus, or that they were in touch with him, but they could not be sure nothing had leaked, with Peter Pettigrew at Voldemort's side.

Someone indeed had noticed Sirius, at last, but it was not Ron's fault.

Nobody had had the chance to mourn Sirius as he deserved.   
They could not clear his name or prove he was innocent in any way. There had been no funeral and all they could do was grieve for him in silence.   
For all the Ministry knew, Sirius Black was still at large, and naturally no one knew the role Harry and Hermione had played in his escape just two years ago.

That year, after the Battle at the Ministry and the spreading news of attacks to the Muggles that were slowly starting to make the pages of the Prophet, Ron's letter ad been a relief. He was inviting her to the Burrow for Harry's birthday and giving her the news of Bill and Fleur's engagement, for once it was nothing she had to worry about or struggle to keep from her parents.

 

Keeping secrets was not her favourite thing, but it had become necessary.  
Some secrets were an easier burden: the ones she could share with Harry, Ron, Ginny and the teachers, all the people who knew very well what kind of crazy and dangerous things had happened at Hogwarts in the last few years.

Some other secrets were something she had to keep to herself and were not to be told to anyone. Well, anyone except for Dumbledore, but the Hedmaster was hardly someone to have a nice relaxing chat with, just to loosen the tension of oppressive knowledge.

 

Harry knew about the Time Turner, of course, he knew she had had it and why - he even used it with her once. What Harry could not understand, and Hermione had no intention of explaining, was what it had meant for her. 

 

She had used the Time Turner every day in her third year, except, at least at the beginning, for Saturdays and Sundays, so that she could attend all the classes she had included in her schedule.   
As a result, she ended up having days that were significantly longer than twenty-four hours. Even if she had only adjusted her timeline to add the extra hours she needed for classes, her days would have been closer to thirty-six hours long rather than twenty-four. But that was not enough. 

 

She had learned pretty soon that she couldn't just come running to the next class. People tend to notice when you are suddenly sitting on a chair, pretending to have been there all the time. So she had to get more cautious, she had to go back in time early enough to join her classmates in the walk towards the class. She had to part from them for a little while, to allow past-Hermione and future-Hermione to swap, coordinate, and join everybody else without no one noticing.

It was exausting.

Professor McGonagall had been very clear warning her not to break any rules or make any mistakes. If someone had found out what was happening or something had gone horribly wrong, the Time Turner would have been immediately returned to the Ministry and her special authorization revoked.  
Not to mention all the horrible posible outcomes she had read about in the tales about wizards who meddled with time. For a while she had actually considered the idea of giving the Time Turner back. It had been a full hour of internal debate that she had then been forced to regain by skipping breakfast.

She had set a very strict schedule, calculating precisely when and where she had to disappear or reappear again, being very careful not to overlap herself and trying to go back only for the minimum amount of time required.

It was fun, at the beginning, and, of course, rewarding and immensely satisfying.

 

Problems came up when she had to plan her homework. She was attending four extra classes and that meant her homework had multiplied: essays, practical exercises and a lot of fascinating reading material she couldn't possibly overlook.

Very soon, almost without noticing, she started to have days that lasted a very long time.

She had to plan additional sleeping breaks to avoid collapsing on the desk during History of Magic and she could not possibly keep skipping lunch all the time, so she had to choose the most practical solution: the Time Turner. Again.

 

The outcome had not been immediatly obvious.

 

She was quite surprised when she recieved, during the summer between fourth and fifth year, an owl from Albus Dumbledore, informing her about something she had not known, despite her knowledge of _Hogwarts: a History_.

 

The age of all the magical people was recorded and well controlled by the Ministry, but there was another record, very accurate that she knew nothing about, the _Hogwarts Book of Names_.

 

It was the Book that allowed Hogwarts teachers to know when there was a new wizard or witch who turned eleven and it recorded the true age of every one of them, even if they were Muggleborn.

 

Dumbledore, who knew everything about the Time Turner and had reckoned on its implications, told her that her stated and true age were no longer the same and that, magically speaking, the one that mattered was the latter.

So, he wrote her, the _Hogwarts Book of Names_ had just proclaimed her coming of age.

 

Hermione had to read the sentence at least three times before she could really understand what it meant.

It seemed that in playing with the Time Turner she had been far too confident. Hermione had come of age in the magical world, having lived for seventeen years as of June 1995.

 

It had been quite a shock, really. 1993 had lasted, from her point of view, over two years.  
No wonder she had felt so tired once summer had come.

 

She had cried, of course, then she had pulled herself together, quite quickly, to be honest.  
She had used up two years of her life, but it wasn't like she had thrown time out of the window or slept through it.  
She had used those days to study, to absorb twice the knowledge than everyone else in Hogwarts had ever managed to learn and she had used those days to save Sirius and Buckbeak.

It was not as if she suddenly got old, but the change of her birthday date was something she had to get used to. 

Only Professor Dumbledore and Professor Mc Gonagall knew that she was now eighteen and she had had her birthday on the 10th of June, at three forty-five in the morning.

 

 

 

“Hermione, dear, would you please go and get something to drink? Your father and I would love a Coke...” 

Putting on her flip-flops, she headed to the ice cream van parked on the promenade.

While she walked, still pleasently numb and relaxed from the long sunbathing session, she wondered what Harry and Ron were doing and how the Order of the Phoenix was coping with the mess left by the battle of the Department of Mysteries.

 

She would know everything very soon: in less than two weeks she would join her friends at the Burrow and she was expecting a full report from Ron and Ginny about everything that was not safe to write and owl.

But now, just for a little longer, she was allowed to relax a little. She deserved it.

 

It was in that precise moment - when she had finally decided to banish every worry about the Order or the war, the new year's textbooks and everyting related to the magical world - that something at the end of the road, just beside the newsstand, caught her attention.

 

Was it possible?

 

She tried to take a closer look, walking through the little crowd near the van, but the man who had caught her attention had his back turned and she could not be sure he was who she thought he was...

 

“Oi! Watch out!”

 

Hermione took a step back when a cyclist almost ran her over while she was trying to cross the road, without turning her eyes from the man near the newsstand.

She didn't bother apologizing or doing anything else, because the man had turned on the spot and now she knew she had been right.

 

Scowling at her, completely out of place in the middle of St.Ives promenade, stood Lucius Malfoy.

 

His long platinum hair was bound in a loose ponytail that rested on the shoulders of a dark suit, something similar to a muggle one, but cut in a style that was more close to a wizard robe and made obvious how much he didn't belong there, among muggle girls in sundresses and children wrapped in beach towels.

Absurd as it was, there was no doubt that he was there and perhaps he was not alone.

 

Hermione urgently looked around for the other Death Eaters, expecting to see them all around her, to start hearing screams and explosions, like at the Quidditch World Cup two summers before.

 

She thought about the attacks on muggles she had read about, the ones that Voldemort had run so often during the first war and that, if the voices were true, were starting again. History was about to repeat itself in a very bad way.

 

But no one was Apparating among the crowd and there were no Death Eaters in sight, apart from Lucius Malfoy. 

When she looked again, he was gone, but she had no doubts. This was not a vision and there was no margin for error: the wizard had been there and he had been Draco's father.

 

_I have to tell Harry, Ron, the Order needs to know! If he's up to something there is no time to lose._

 

But what in the world was Lucius Malfoy doing, coming out into the open like this?

 

A few days ago, the Daily Prophet had reported that Malfoy was being released from Azkaban after a surprising Wizengamot sentence in his favor.

Hermione had not believed the news when she read it and she had been so angry that she had burst in a stream of highly colourful language, earning a shocked look from her mother and not stopping until her father interrupted her, asking for an explanation.

She had had to tell them the story, or, to be more precise, an _extremely edited_ version of who Malfoy was and what he had done to end up in Azkaban.

Her parents had known very little of what had happened at the Departement of Mysteries and were shocked to learn the details of what had happened at the hands of the man who was now staring at them from the moving picture on the front page of the newspaper.

He had got away with it yet again, and had spent only three days in Azkaban.

Hermione was furious. Her word was not enough to convict him and neither was Harry's or Luna's, because the Ministry refused to consider the testimony of six teenagers for the trial, unsurprisingly.  
What had been surprising was that Malfoy was able to find a way out of the accusations brought by the other Order members, including Aurors like Tonks and Kingsley.

 

The details of the brief trial were unclear in the Daily Prophet, but from what she could read between the lines, it emerged that some persuasive proof had been produced and the Ministry was now convinced that someone was trying to frame the Malfoy family for crimes they didn't commit.

Lucius Malfoy was, after all, a senior official of the same Ministry and Hermione was not surprsed that Fudge had been willing to help his cause once again.

 

But now, despite the fact that it was extremely unwise and utterly absurd, Malfoy was here, in Cornwall and she had to tell the Order as soon as possible. To find an owl and send a message to the Burrow would have taken time, so she had to hurry.

 

She ran back to her parents with a terrible thought rising in her mind.   
If something was going to happen to muggles, her parents would have been a primary target.   
They were in grave danger and she had to summon the Order immediately, before the Death Eaters put their plan into action.


	2. Act Two: the Turn

_The second act is called_ The Turn _._

_The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary._

_Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking._

_You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled.  
_

 

* * *

_  
_ **Act II: The Turn.**

 

 

It took her some time to convince her parents to hurry up without giving in to histerics and so, when they finally returned home, it was already evening and the sun was setting.

 

She was of age, but she could not exploit all the advantages that this condition meant. Dumbledore explained that she could, in case of need, use her wand, since the Trace, the charm that tracked down the use of magic in underage wizards, was now gone. 

However, she couldn't Apparate, since she still had no licence, even if she thought she had a good grasp on how it was done. She was feeling frantic, but she didn't trust herself to be able to try her first illegal Apparition and splinch herself in amoment like that.

 

When she arrived home, she wrote a brief message on a piece of parchment and immediately ran outside again, heading to the Owlery. There was one, merely a little emergency service owlery, in the back garden of a pub not far from the cottage. It was small and enchanted so that muggles didn't suspect thety had a bunch of howls waiting for letters just beside them, but it was very useful for the wizards spending their time in St.Ives.

 

It was early in the evening and all the Muggles were enjoying the pubs and restaurants near the Promenade, leaving the park empty as much as it was crowded during the day. Hermione started to run along the path that crossed the grove, taking the shortest way she knew between the trees, the one that would take her directly to the pub and the owlery.

Only when she was in the middle of the park she realized this was not a very wise move.   
She was completely alone and she couldn't hear the noises of the street or see the lights from the houses, hidden by the trees that now surrounded her completely.

She had never been so deep inside the park and she hoped not to run into some muggle couple making out in the woods... that happened a lot if you listened to the tales the girls from the beach used to tell. She giggled, feeling her tension drop a little. She decided to draw her wand and risk a Lumos charm, not a powerful one, but enough to light the path she was walking. If she met muggles on her way, she could have easily convinced them it was a torchlight, after all.

_*CRACK!*_

Something heavy and dark suddenly materialized behind her, something that fell hard on the ground, letting out a muffled groan.

Hermione quickly stepped away and turned around to see, gripping her wand more thigtly, and mentally scolded herself for her brilliant idea of crossing the park alone. It was farytale dont's 1-0-1, after all.

Not far from her, a man was trembling with the effort of standing up and then, with visible strain and a second pained moan, he succeded and leaned himself on a tree, panting heavily and finally glancing up at her.

It was Hermione's time for gasping, when she met the gaze of Lucius Malfoy.

 

“... Grrrranger!” He growled, as he saw her.

 

“Stay where you are, Mr. Malfoy! I have my wand and...”

 

“Expelliarmus!” Hermione was taken aback and saw her wand fly in the air to land between the bushes. “...And now you don't.”

 

Lucius let out a chocked laugh that gave Hermione the chills, while he pointed his wand at the girl and moved his hair away from his face with a nervous fling of the head.

 

“Well, well, what do we have here? Miss Granger, in a place where she should not be, as usual...”

 

“What are you doing here? I suppose it's not for a vacation...” She didn't feel very smart, to be honest, provoking the wizard in her current situation, but she couldn't help it. When she was nervous she talked. A lot. “You're not going away with this, I'll tell. I'll tell that I saw you and that you attacked me, and Dumbled...”

 

“Dumbledore is nowhere near here and you will tell him nothing, little mudblood. Stay put and don't go all Gryffindor on me!” He started walking towards her, closing the distance with a few steps. “Regrettably for me, I haven't got the time to play with you, so you're going to be perfectly safe if you just...” He let out a small chocked sound and grinded his teeth, then doubled up and collpased forward.

Without tinking about it, she instinctively tried to catch him, but the weitght of the tall wizard was too much for her and they both ended up on the ground.

 

“Mister Malfoy?” Crushed underneath the unconsciuos Deatheater, she began to crawl away to free herself, but when she saw he didn't respond at all she stopped and tried to understand what was wrong with him. He really seemed passed out, but she could see he was gasping for breath and his left hand was twitching. 

She felt an odd sense of worry and something else, somethinge very similar to pity. 

She had the occasion to stand up and run, she had to grab her wand and warn the Order immediately, but she couldn't help wondering what had happened.

Was he hurt? 

_He's a Deatheater and if I don't leave immediately, it's going to end badly.  
But something is wrong with him, I can't leave him here like this. He needs help..._

 

Finally, hoping not to regret what she was doing, she managed to flip him over on his back. 

His wand was still in his right hand and when she tried to take it she discovered that he had it in a firm grip and it was impossible. His cane had fallen right beside her.   
He had to be conscious, but his eyes were closed and his breath was laboured.

It was really strange for her to see him like this, so powerless and defenceless... For a moment, but a very intense and terrible one, Hermione saw herself being the instrument of revenge on the deatheater. She could get him a lot of payback for the pain he had caused, for every time he had tried to kill one of them, for Sirius' deat for... _NO_!

 

She shook her head and with a shiver cast away those kind of thoughts, clearing her mind. She was already feeling guilty, realizing she had actually considered hexing - or perhaps just hitting with his own cane - a man who was semi-unconscious and lying on the ground, injured and powerless. But he was no innocent, she had to admit, and she had been so angry about his release from Azkaban that she had fantasized a lot about hexing him,  _badly_.

 

_I'm so stupid! So Proud and stupid! Like I would be such a match for him, even injured and barely conscious.... And he's probably not alone either. Oh Merlin, what if he's not alone? Hermione, you really are idiotic sometimes, you are..._

 

“Granger...” she startled at the sound of his voice and she backed up a bit, while he opened his eyes and tried to sit up with visible effort. “This looks like your lucky day... Go away!”

 

Hermione freezed instead, not sure of what to do. 

“I can't... You're hurt, I can't leve you here like this. Come on, sit up, I'll help you...” She sat up on her knees and reached for the wizard, who was struggling to get on his feet.

 

“Do not touch me! Filty mudblood, don't you _dare_ touch me!” His face was suddenly transfigured into an expression of disdain, cold and cruel.

 

Hermione stood back and felt her rage burn up again, making ashes of all her good intentions and the sense of pity she had experienced a moment before.

“Alright, stay here and die! But be certain that Dumbledore will learn that you were here doing... whatever you were doing.”

 

She stood up and almost stomped her feet at the ground, feeling incredibly childish and really stupid.   
She felt so angry that she could have hexed him, now, if she only have had her wand. She searched the ground with her eyes but she couldn't see it, it had probably landed in the bushes behind her when Lucius Malfoy had disarmed her.

_May he stay there and agonize on the ground!_   
He deserved it. He had to suffer as much as all the people who had been trough hell because of him, it was just fair. He had to pay with pain and a long agony, alone, in the woods, knowing that it had been her, Hermione Granger, the _mudblood_ , the one who abandoned him alone and pathetic, defenseless and hurt and...

 

“M-miss Granger...” She spun around, turning to face him with her fists closed so thigtly it was beginning to hurt.

 

“What?!” She spat.

 

Lucius Malfoy was still on the ground and it looked like his attept in standing up were not very successful. He was grimacing in pain and his legs were trembling, his face was nothing like the mask of cruelty and ice he had worn just a moment ago. 

She looked at him, from her standing position, and made no move to help him, but she felt her anger tone down again in front of the pityful show of the injured wizard.

 

“Miss Granger...please.” there was a moment of silence long enough for her to consider how extraordinary the word _please_ sounded when it came from a Malfoy. "Just a little help, perhaps...?"

 

She decided it was better to help him quickly, before he could say something horrible again, something that would make her kick him in the face instead of doing the right thing. Because this was the right thing to do, she tought, it had to be. You were supposed to help people, even if they were mean and dangerous, _doing good things brings good things_ , or this was what her mother used to say all the time. Hermione just hoped she was right.

The idea of leaving him here, hurt and alone, really was something beneath her, her conscience would have tormented her for ages if she had let someone die, out of anger and spite.

 

“What happened? Why are you hurt? Have you assaulted someone? Some muggle? I will...”

 

“No, Granger, no.” A smirk appeared on Lucius lips. “We haven't assaulted muggles. I have done nothing you should worry about, today. Actually, you have done something troublesome today...”

 

She looked at him and raised an eyebrow, “Me? What have I done that could be troublesome?”

 

“You saw me, and you shouldn't have. And, to answer all of your questions, no, I'm not physically hurt.”

 

Hermione looked at the wizard who was now propped against a tree, trying to regain some control of his limbs, still slightly shaking, and understood what had happened.   
She remembered the spider in her fourth year class, the expression of anguish on Neville's eyes, the wand of the fake Moody pointed without mercy at the creature... The memory was still vivid and cold as a blade.

Someone had been using the Cruciatus Curse on Lucius Malfoy.

For a moment she could not process the information, she didn't know how to react. She shouldn't have been surprised, not after the things she had witnessed at the Department of Mysteries, but she was.

Lucius Malfoy had been tortured, it was obvious now, but who had been the torturer and why?

 

He looked at her and read her horrified face.

“Yes, I think you got it. Draco told me you were quite annoyingly intelligent, for a mudblood.”

 

She was confused, she didn't even registered the usual insult, busy as she was trying to understand what had happened. He had been tortured and now he was here, broken, asking for her help, but with eyes that still had a light of fury, like a wounded wolf.

 

_He would have let me die without a second tought, had it been me, and it would have made his day. But I would be no better if I ran away now. If they've tortured him there must be a reason and perhaps I can find out what is it and it can be useful for the Order and - Draco said what? - I have to help him and I need tu hurry up..._

 

“Mister Malfoy, I wont' ask it again, I need to know what were you doing here...”

 

“You _need_ to know? You do? And why? So that you can report to our dear Dumbledore, like a good soldier?”

He saw anger rise in her eyes at his words. “Oh, no, please don't look at me like that or I might die of terror! I promise I will behave and won't say another word about our illustrious Headmaster... Even if that look in your eyes, right now, Granger, really is delightful!”

 

She was a brilliant student, a loyal friend and a truly gifted witch, but among the great deal of good qualities she had, there was one that was abandoning her while she grew up: her self control. This evening was becoming a neverending rollercoaster of emotion and her patience was about to burst into flames. She felt her face flushing and she clenched her fists, breathing heavily. She realized she was making a fool of herself. 

_Am I going to stomp my feet on the ground? To cry, perhaps? Oh, he's having so much fun at me... I need to stop reacting like this, right now!_

 

“Realx, Granger, don't blow yourself up. You want to know what I was doing here, don't you? Very well, I was charged with a task on behalf of some friends...”

 

“Deatheaters!” she cut him off.

 

Lucius raised an eyebrow. “If that's what you think. These are only your deductions, girl. Anyway, those friends of mine did not appreaciate the news of our brief encounter, today, and the resulting decision to postpone what I was planning to do.”

 

“So they...”

 

“Oh yes.”

 

“Because I saw you?”

 

“Yes, Granger, because you were, as usual, where you were not supposed to be. Now you have you explaination, so please try to decide if you finally want to go away and let me rest or if you want to summon all the Auror department!” He raised his voice and his angry tone hit her like a Stunning spell. “Do whatever you want, but do it now.”

 

“I can't leave you here. You... you're going to hurt somebody and it will be my fault. I have to stop you from...”

 

“Oh, yes, how could I forget? I'm the evil and cruel Malfoy, the villain of your private cheap novel, where you are the upright and brave Miss Granger, the heroine in her shiny armour... Things are so simple when you look them like that, aren't they?”

 

“There is no other way to look at _things_!”

She was fuming, she felt like she could burst fire from her nostrils and kill him with a glance.   
How could he make fun of her like that? He was nothing more than a evil little piece of...

“ _Things_ are pretty much clear as they are, whitchever angle you choose. I might not be so heroic and brave, but I wasn't the one who lead the Deatheaters at the Department of Mysteries, nor the one planning attacks on muggles. It was not me in that graveyard, all masked and cloaked with the body of Cedric Diggory on the ground!” 

She was almost screaming, now and she could feel her nails digging in her palms as she clenched her fists.

She felt furious and at the same time she experienced a pleasure that was almost fisical, venting all that fury on Malfoy, shooting him with all her pain, all her recriminations. It was gratifying and relieving and she felt like she could have gone on forever.

 

“Very well, Granger, but are you sure you'll never do the same?”

 

Hermione fell silent all at once. What?

 

Malfoy rose on his feet, carefully, propping himself against the tree. 

“Are you so sure that you'll never, ever do what I do if... If they told you...”

Lucius looked down and his hair fell like a curtain, hiding his face while he seemed to search the words to end that sentence.

 

“If they told me _what_? I would never... I'd rather die than...”

 

“Oh, I'm certain! So noble! So brave! But what if it wasn't your life at stake?

His voice was hot and wrathful, now, passionate, but his eyes, almost hidden behind the hair, showed that his cutting irony and his sense of superiority were well alive and not at all diminished by his suffering.   
With a swift but unsteady movement, like a delirious man, he grasped at the collar of her shirt, yanking her and keeping her still in front of him.

She didn't have time to react but for a useless attempt to balance herself with her hands against the chest of the man who was almost lifting her up with a single hand.

“Let me go! Let me go right now!”

“You foolish Mudblood and your most noble and idiotic attitude! Don't you get it?”

“What? What am I supposed to get?”

His gaze pierced her like an arrow. At that distance his eyes were so ridicolously pale that they seemed to release a bitter cold all around them. She felt shivering, but she knew that it wasn't her. He was trembling, still under the effect of the curse and close as they were, his words came out in a whisper.

“They... They have Draco!”

 

 

***

 

Lucius let the girl help him, feeling her legs stumble under his weight. He leaned completely on her shoulders, making her struggle a bit more and causing her more trouble. It had to be quite the effort for the little mudblood. He had at least ten inches over her and he was gripping her shoulder for support, digging his fingers into her flesh, perfectly mimicing the spasms of a cursed and hurt man.  
He hoped he was hurting her, just because. 

Despite the effort, anyway, the girl was still going, helping him through the trees and stoically dragging him with her without a single complaint, nothing more than some delightful puffing sound now and then.  
  
“Granger, wait...” he let out his voice with just the right amount of chocked suffering.

Hermione stopped, catching her breath. “What now? I don't know how long I'll be able to support you, try to make an effort...”

“No, Granger, there... on the ground at your right.” Hermione looked down, without letting him go. “It's your wand... _Accio_!”

With a single flowing motion, Hermione's wand darted from the ground to Malfoy's hand, the same hand that was gripping his own wand. He catched it with two fingers and he handed it out to her. “I doubt you're going to do more than threaten me, with this.” he added.

Hermione took her wand, not wasting any time and tucking it in her pocket, before trying to adjust her hold of the stumbling wizard who was now looking at her with a more relaxed expression, almost smiling while she struggled under his weight.

“Really? You find it funny, Mr Malfoy?”

She felt flushed, there was not even the hint of a breeze in the woods and she was starting to feel exhausted. He, on the other hand, looked like he had just stepped out of a portrait: perfectly neat and just a little paler than usual, perhaps, even if it was difficult to say in the dark. He looked like he hadn't done nothing more strenuous than ordering a butterbeer.

“Actually, yes, it's a bit funny, Ms Granger...”

 

His smell had became stronger, impossible to ignore while he was leaning on her, he smelled like something spicy and sharp, intense, like the fumes that came out of Snape's dungeon, but nicer, less bitter and more enveloping, one of those scents that you find yourself investigating almost without noticing.

She shook herself from that untimely olfactory exploration, a bit puzzled by the fact that she had been so easily distracted. She was really getting tired, but they were close, she just had to endure for a little longer now.

“Come on, we have to cross the road.”

“Where are you taking me, Granger? Not to one of your doctors, I hope...”

“Don't fret and try to keep the pace. We're going at my place.”

To be honest, she had not thought about where to bring him, since that moment, but, yes, that was the only possibile solution.   
She could set him in her conservatory, where her parents almost never went. With a spell to prevent any risk of them coming down to say hello, and all the curtains safely closed, she would have had the time to think of what to do next.

She had to call the Oder. Lupin would have known what to do. But if the other Deatheaters really were helding Draco hostage...

“He's my son, Granger! My son! And I have to do what the Dark Lord bids or Draco...” His voice had been almost a hiss, full of anguish even if he was aiming for threatening.

  
Were they going to kill him? Maybe worse than that.  
She thought about all the fates that were possibly waiting for Draco, if his father was telling the truth and, despite everything that had passed between them, she found out that she was unable to wish even the least horrifying of them upon him.  
  
  


_Stop bickering with yourself! You're going to help him and you're going to do it on your own. And yes. It is a very stupid decision._  
  
As they crossed the road, with the cottage in sight, she mentally noted that talking to herself was not a sign that things were going to improve anytime soon.

 

They got to the conservatory from the back garden. Hermione was exhausted and with her last ounce of strenght she managed to help Lucius Malfoy to the large french door that her parents had thankfully left unlocked, unlike the small iron gate that she had to open with a Alohomora, for them to get into the cottage's garden.   
Her parents were at home and already in their bedroom, if the light coming from the first floor window was any inidcation, probably reading or watching tv for a bit before sleeping.

  
She thought about going upstairs to say goodnight, claiming to have just returned from an ice cream-and-chat evening with her muggle friends from the beach, but then she reckoned that the whole pretense would have required for a change of clothes or at least five minutes of rearranging hair and washing herself, to be believable. She was covered in sweat and had dirt on her trousers, her shirt was crumpled and her hair was a crazy mess of curls plastered to her forhead.

Even before she fully entered the room, she decided to resort to option B: a mild sleeping spell to be done through the keyhole. The last thing she wanted was her father coming down the stairs to meet one of the most dangerous wizards of Britain for a cup of tea.

 

Once inside the coservatory, she let go of Malfoy, just as they passed the couch where he collapsed with a moan.

The sleeping spell took less than a minute, but she almost tripped on her way back down the stairs. Her head was spinning and her legs felt like jelly.

Once back into the conservatory, she made a beeline for the armchair in front of the couch and let herself sink into the cushions.  
While catching her breath, she tried to asset the situation with a modicum of lucidity.  
There would have been some kind of explaination to do, sooner or later, if the unconscious form of Lucius Malfoy on the couch was any indication, but that was a problem she was gladly putting away for another moment.

When she felt a little better, she got up and closed the door communicating to the rest of the cottage, casting a Colloportus spell on it for good measure. Then she closed the drapes on the french window, after a last glance to the back yard, to be certain that nobody had been looking at them from the garden or the back street.

The room was secured, she could have said. The only problem was that the real danger was inside, with her.

  
  



	3. Act Three: The Prestige

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>  But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough;  
>   
>  you have to bring it back.  
>   
>  That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call  
>   
>  "The Prestige".

 

 

 

 

_Act Three: the Prestige_

 

  
  


Lucius Malfoy was breathing heavily, his eyes closed, sprawled on the couch with his head propped against one of the armrest and one arm dangling from the edge.  
Hermione looked at him and realized the enormity of the situation, all of a sudden, and she felt the sudden urge to burst out laughing.  
_ Hysterical giggling... _ she said to herself.  
She was feeling like the first time Hagrid had brought Buckbeak in front of them, something so terribly dangerous and also so...

“Granger...” 

She shook the thought away, startled by his voice.   
  
“Granger, come here and help me with this, I can't breath... Merlin is hot in this muggle houses! What do you usually do in the summer? Sleep on the roof?”  
He was awake and he was looking her askance, with a sneer on his lips. 

“ If you're trying to be funny, Mr Malfoy, you can save the trouble, really...”

She got to the couch and leant over, to help him remove his jacket, a sort of absurd frock coat-like thing that was so at the neck that it was probably chocking him to death.  
The process was not easy, since he wasn't lifting himself from the couch enough for her to slip the fabric off his arms, so she had to struggle for a while, until she finally managed to get him free of the thing, only to see a silken cravat underneath the jacket, almost as tight as the collar had been.

When she pulled herself up, she noticed, almost felt, like a touch, his gaze linger on her chest, where the loose collar of her shirt had drifted enough to show just a glimpse of skin below the neckline.

Hermione flinched back, like she'd been stung by a bee, and walked towards the kitchenette.

“Take that tie off. I don't know how can you breath in that thing” she said sharply. “I'll get the tea done.”

  
  


She covered the small distance to the kitchenette, on the other side of the room, and she almost stumbled on her own feet.

What the hell did just happened? Did Malfoy just looked at her... It was absolutely ridiculous.  
And yet, she had felt it, she had felt that look, it had been almost like something was touching her skin, crawling on her, and the air in the room had suddenly got thicker and harder to breath. All the oxygen in the room had been replaced with the smell of Lucius's clothes.

Malfoy's.  
Lucius Malfoy.

The jacket.  
She was still holding the jacket. She tossed it on the back of a chair without even looking.

Tea.  
She had to make tea.  
A nice hot cup of tea.

Why was it so hot, all of a sudden?

She filled the kettle and got it started with the red button on the side, she felt thankful for the slow muggle device that was giving her just a minute of time to think.  
She took the milk from the fridge and she automatically unscrewed the cap, while looking around the little counter to find the sugar bowl.  
She was feeling like the summer had suddenly got African.

She had never felt like that before, not after that time when Viktor... That time with Viktor Krum, at the Yule Ball, at Hogwats.

But that was different, it couldn't be the same, because with Viktor...

  
_ Oh.  _

The kettle beeped loudly, and she jumped, letting the milk go for a second, enough for it to spill on the floor and her trousers before she fumbled to catch it, on its way to hit the ground.

She stepped back from the pool of milk at her feet, only to bump into something behind her.

“Granger... What are you doing?”

  
She spun around. Lucius was less than a step away from her, standing with the help of his cane. He seemed confused.   
He was looking at her, standing in front of the kettle that was filling the air with steam, with milk all over her clothes and her hair like a crazy mist of curls.

  
_ I probably look horrible. _

_...What?_

She pulled herself together.

“The wa... I was making tea and I've... The milk has...”

Almost.

She pointed at her wet trousers and then looked back to Malfoy, like that was an explanation.

 

“You're wet. I really don't want any tea.” He stared at her, sizing her up top to toe, lingering on the white stain on her light trousers. “I feel much better. I'll be able to Apparate home soon enough.”

The air was filled with steam from the kettle, Hermione could feel the heat on her back becoming almost unbearable, but she knew that it couldn't have been that much. There was something else, some other heat, in front of her.

_Why doesn't he move away? Why is he staring at me? Oh, pull yourself together, you idiot! Stop trembling, Hermione! And stop talking to yourself!_

 

 

“ Granger? What's the matter? Why are you shivering, now?”

It was beyond easy.  
The poor little frightened mudblood was so pliant that it was almost embarrassing.  
It had taken so little effort to bring her where he wanted her: just a touch of consideration, an unspoken praise, to let her know that she had something he found attractive and there she was. They had told him how much she craved attention, everything in her screamed to be looked at, to be judjed and rated, and that was her weakness. She was looking for approval, even now, even with her enemy, and now she was almost ready to yield.  
It was the most delicate moment, the one where he could have lost her if he wasn't careful.

Lucius raised his hand to her forehead and with his thumb, very gently, removed a droplet of sweat from her brow.  
“Step away from that... That thing, the heat is...”

He closed his eyes in mid sentence and swayed, almost falling to the ground.  
Hermione got to him just in time, holding him up. The cane fell to the ground, hitting the wooden floor with a thud.

“Mr Malfoy! Please stay up! I can't hold you, please!”

Lucius opened his eyes, and Hermione couldn't see the glimpse of amusement that passed behind his look.  
“I'm fine... I'll be fine, just... Help me back to the couch.” He gripped her strongly, digging his fingers in her side, leaving marks on her hip and making her gasp just for a moment, before they stumbled together to the couch, where they fell, without a word.

 

 

 

Hermione felt like melting. It was a strange feeling, something so unexpected and new that a wave of panic was beginning to rise in the back of her head, and as the panic rose, she felt less and less able to react to... It was pointless, really, to keep pretending nothing what's happening there.  
She could call it panic, surprise and confusion, blame the steam, the kettle, the walk, the summer, but she knew perfectly well that it was just plain and simple arousal.  
Great.

She wondered if he had picked it up.  _ Yeah, probably. And he's likely laughing his ass of, right now. I have to get up, leave him here and call Dumbledore. He'll know what to do. He'll know what to do with Draco, he'll save him... and me. _

Something shifted on her left

  
  


“Hermione?”

Her name sounded kind of strange when spoken by a Malfoy... did one of them ever pronounced it before?  
His hand was on her forehead, parting her hair, moving them from her eyes.

Just the light, completely innocent touch of his fingers on her skin made her feel like a caged animal.

_Where the hell is my highly praised brain, right now? Why can't I think straight?  
Really smart, really, really rational, Hermione, let me tell you. You're acting like the proverbial moth to the flame and you know what happens to moths, don't you?_

The voice inside her head was very angry and very, very right.  
Th rest of her, anyway, didn't seem to react the way it should have.

__ I have to get away, call the Order.   
Impulsive. Presumptuous. Idiot. Get a grip!  
Tall, blonde and dangerous and I get all giddy, like a teen running on hormones and adrenaline... Ok,  technically  I am one, bit it's not a good reason to...

“Are you all right?” The hand was touching her neck, stopping to feel her pulse.

 _Maybe I'm wrong though. He's a human being, come on, not a complete monster. He's doing what he has to do for his family, for his son... What would I do in his place?_  
Oh great Merlin, I'm fishing for excuses now! I'm rationalizing all of this for... Am I really that stupid?  
There are no excuses, you know it perfectly well, Hermione. The true question here is a different one.  
Right now. Right here. Do you really care?

“ Hermione, please answer me...” His voice sounded like a hiss, so close to her that she shuddered.

She opened her eyes.  
He was there, so unbearably close, leaning on her with a doubtful look in his eyes.  
Then the doubt disappeared, like he had just read her mind.

_ Is it that clear? _   She asked herself and she already knew the answer.  
She felt ashamed and shame felt like an electrical impulse, making her aware of everything that was happening. Or everything she now wanted to happen.

Her rational part, the one that was almost always in control, rose from the flow of thoughts that was flooding her mind and tried one last desperate move to get back in command, shouting and kicking, screaming that all this had no sense at all.

With a sudden movement she rose up, straightening her back, trying to get off the couch.  
It wasn't too late to change her mind, to renounce that stupid, dangerous idea.

She immediately felt something pushing her down again, on the cushions and she knew that her last try, her last spark of will was gone with that.  
The hand of Lucius Malfoy was pinning her down, making her attempt vain and putting her back exactly where she had started, just one breath away from his eyes.

“That's quite enough.”

His lips were on hers in just the idea of a second, and they were not gentle at all. They were not leaving her any chance to back off or put up a defence. She couldn't run, she couldn't hide, so she lost control.  
But he was all about control, with his lips sealing on hers and his tongue finding the way to hers, asking no permission when he made her recline her head with his hand grabbing her hair, with his fingers grazing her scalp and tugging at her just enough to make her feel a resonance all down her body, like she was a violin and her strings were being plucked to test their notes.  
And she let herself sound, to a music she barely knew she could play, with her tongue tasting warmth and urgency and her skin feeling the tingle of every chord of the song.

She discovered she dreaded the silence and that breathing was harder, and her heart was racing when he let her go.

In his eyes there was no pain nor weariness, but something burning, like some kind of monster had awoken, the same monster she had feared to approach just moments ago, when he was unconscious and she was afraid of coming closer, comparing him to an hyppogriff.  
And like to an hyppogriff you owe respect, she was now presenting him with the offer of her fear.

Fear did what rationality couldn't achieve and Hermione tried to move, to slip away and run from that couch, from that room, possibly from that town and the entire country, given the chance, but a pair of strong arms kept her exactly where she was.

“Wait.”

It was a request, but it sounded more like an order. A cautious one, though, an order that was not really scary, not much, and that for a moment seemed to make her feel better, more centered.

“Hermione...”

Hermione, again. Just  _ Hermione _ . How much power was in a name?

“No. Don't. Stay.”   
Three words, no questions.  
His voice was low, she could feel the vibrations almost as clear as the words themselves.

She barely noticed the movement, she just felt him kiss her again, just a brush of lips, and then his mouth was slowly leaving more light kisses on the edge of her jaw, down to her neck, in a trail of warm breath on her clavicles, meeting his own hands on her shoulders, freeing them, letting them go, slowly, down her arms.  
His hands were scalding, or her skin was, she couldn't tell.

Hermione was gripping the fabric of the couch, anchoring herself to it, like it was the only thing keeping her there, keeping her from drifting off.  
She felt Malfoy's hands finding their way under her shirt, brushing her navel and a spark of sudden electricity, just like a spell, flew from her skin to her spine. She arched, without even noticing she was doing it, pressing herself against that touch, against his hand that was slowly tracing her skin up to her ribs.

“Let go of that couch, Granger. Just...” he whispered in her ear “...let go.”   
There was nothing careful in that whisper, nothing even remotely tender. It was the hiss of a predator giving one last warning to a trapped animal, just to make it lose any hope of escaping.  
She felt trapped, but she suddenly realized she didn't mind.

  
  


  
  


Lucius could feel her muscles straining under his touch, trying desperately to hold on to something, trying not to lose control, not to lose contact with reality, not to let him take too much, go too far. But it was already too late, he knew that and she probably started to understand as well.

It had been too long since he had that much fun playing with someone else's sensations and confusion. She was scared, and ridiculous, and absolutely lost, but it was starting to make him feel euphoric, and the small whimpers she was not aware of letting out were making him eager to push her more and more, to see how long he could drag this out without actually taking her.

It had been just a task, at first, a slightly demeaning act he had to perform to see his game play out to its conclusion. To touch a mudblood like that, to lower his skin to be the instrument for her excitement and pleasure, had never been something he considered before, and the thought had given him some measure of discomfort at first, but there was no revulsion, now, no trace of disgust. He was using her and playing her like an instrument, making her the tool for his own amusement, a game, a toy to be enjoyed, exploited and then disposed of, like a cat's broken prey.

His touches were careful and staged, not to aggressive, not too intimidating, nothing that would scare her off too fast.  
He was slowly building a map of her skin with his hands and lips, feeling her breath shake at every touch, opening slowly for him, or for the ridiculous image of him she had let herself believe to be true. It was so childish of her to believe in the fairytale of the fierce dragon enslaved to do some evil master's bidding. The innocent wild beast, wounded and secretly kind, under his monstrous scaly skin. He was doing her a favour, really, working to shatter every trace of such a naïve disposition.  
  
The witch arching beneath him, rising to meet his touch was nothing but that: a naïve young girl, determined to believe in the goodness of everyone until the last moment, completely unable to resist raising to the bait if you lured her with a touching story spiced with something dangerously forbidden.

She was most definitively entertaining, the little mudblood... not so righteous and proud as she wanted to see herself, after all.  
 _Bad girl... Bad, bad witch. You don't sleep with someone who tried to kill you._

He smiled against the curve of her neck. It was time for this dance to begin properly.

  
  


  
  


  
  


She was still grasping the fabric of the cushions beneath her, when she felt him forcefully tear her hands off the couch, in one swift motion that didn't leave her the time to react. She felt pliant and tense at the same time. It was almost as being trapped like that, with her arms pinned above her head, gave her a strange sense of self confidence, of safety.  
She couldn't move, she couldn't look away from him, but what really was trapping her was not his body on top of hers, or his physical strength. It was her own desire, that strange, still unfamiliar sensation that had built so quickly that was now too powerful to be tamed. She was scared, but more of herself than anything else.

He kissed her again, and again, crushing her mouth each time more forcefully, shutting out every other perception that was not his tongue, his teeth, his lips. She couldn't concentrate, she couldn't feel anything but him, and she realized only at the last second that he was letting her hands go, using one of his arms to drag her with him off the couch and to the floor.  
Controlling every move, even rolling down from the cushions to the carpet, he ended up on top of her, half resting between her legs, and when she opened her eyes she found him looking at her like she was something to eat, like he was going to swallow her whole.

Hermione wanted to sit up, regain some modicum of control, maybe, just maybe try and run her hands between those hair that looked so tantalizingly soft, dangling just above her from where they had begun to escape his carefully tied velvet ribbon.   
When she tried to move, using her hands to rise herself up a bit, she found out she couldn't. Her arms were shaking, her hands were not responding, like she was scared, terrified.  
She was puzzled... she didn't feel that scared anymore, but it was like her body had gone on a separated journey, mixing up every signal, every sensation, and her mind had stayed a bit behind, trying to rationalize fear, excitement, curiosity, and the last crumble or rationality that was still telling her to move, to stop, to push him away. 

He rose up abruptly, grasping her legs just under her knees and pulling her closer, dragging her roughly along the carpet. She let out a whimper, and she felt her shirt roll up and expose her stomach, stopping just underneath her breast. Se suddenly felt vulnerable, exposed, and while some part of her was telling her how silly that was, given the situation, some other, less sarcastic part of her kept trying to cope with what was happening, not very successfully.

  
_Oh please make him stop! Make him stop... Why am I not moving? Why can't I move? I should. I don't want to.  
Oh, darn, it's not my fault... I can't. I don't want to... I don't..._

  
His hand was on her stomach, so warm all of a sudden, and she just had the time to feel him move it from her legs to there, and then to her chest, before he grabbed her crumpled shirt and ripped it open, sending buttons everywhere, and jerking her up the floor for a second.

She couldn't focus, she was suddenly staring at him, towering above her with his hand on her neck, not gripping her too tight, but not caressing her either. It was more like he was keeping her down, controlling her, and his breath was faster, his eyes unfocused for a moment, like he was trying to look at all of her, not just her face, her chest, her legs, but all of her at once.

She swallowed slowly, feeling him loosen his grip on her throat. She could see her bra was gone too and she felt a shiver, like a tingling, that came from her exposed breasts and went down along her spine, reaching her core, making her feel like her whole centre had been moved. 

It was like the first time she had properly performed a spell: all her body had gathered her energy in one tight ball of will, and the wand had pulled magic from that. Now she felt like magic was starting to gather inside her bones, her muscles, her skin, but she couldn't tell exactly where. It felt like her center was shifting, from her lips to her belly, to her breast and then lower, between her thighs.

Then it all stopped shifting, because he moved, suddenly grinding hard between her legs, and she felt like she had been electrocuted.  
Hermione gasped, arching her back, feeling her heat collecting all on the spot where they were joined. It was a bit painful, and terrifying, and she wanted more, but she still felt paralized. She didn't know what to do, how to move; her hands fluttered, rising to touch him and then dropping back to the floor almost immediately.

  
_Damn everything! I'm useless, I'm... Help! I... I'm clueless, dry and dusty, like an old book! Even Ginny..._  
Her memory flashed back to when she had seen Ginny kissing Dean for the first time, beside the lake, and how that had made her feel inadequate, unwanted. She was miss know-it-all, but that was not something she could study and learn. She had to feel, to actually _feel_ something and she had never felt anything like this, not ever, until now. Now what would have Ginny said, seeing her like that?  
 _She will never know. They will never know. They can't know..._  
She opened her eyes and saw him, absurdly beautiful in the dismal light of the muggle lamp. Lucius was smiling at her, with his predatory grin, his breath laboured, his eyes fixed on her.  
She suddenly felt powerful, wanted, desired, she was feeling like there was nothing she couldn't do, she was feeling alive.

She didn't gave herself time to rethink and panic: she reached out for his collar and pulled him closer, until his lips came crushing on her. The kiss was urgent, almost desperate as she felt, while she started moving with him, trusting and grinding with him, feeling heat rising more and more from her core.

She pressed her hands to his back, holding him tight for a second, looking for more contact, more everything, like she was trying to pull him through her; then she let him go abruptly and started to claw at his shirt, trying to pull it out of his trousers.

He moved away, hastily and, without losing his grace, he unbuttoned his shirt and quickly undressed.  
Hermione couldn't be bothered to follow the process, she was mesmerized by his skin, revealed under the grey silk of his clothes, and she raised up to lace her lips to his chest. She could feel his heartbeat and his sharp intake of breath when she experimentally bit at his nipple, she could feel his erection twitching against her, still confined by the fabric of his trousers but scalding hot and insistently pressing at her.

  
  


  
Lucius had stopped for a second, just to take her in, just to look at the marvel that she was, splayed on the cheap carpet of the muggle house, with her shirt and bra he had just tore open revealing little dark nipples calling to his lips, her trousers riding low on her hips revealing pale pink knickers underneath... He could hear his own breath growing faster and his desire becoming a living thing, like a beast he struggled to keep in control.

The mudblood was most definitively _something_ , she had that light in her eyes, like a challenge, like a secret waiting to be stolen, something that he wanted to strip away from her.  
He rememberd what he'd thought moments before, while he was looking at her struggling to keep control: he wanted to take her, to eat her alive, to swallow he whole and leave nothing behind.  
He was going to have her, he was going to keep her, a possession, like an house elf, like a tool to use when he wanted and for whatever he wanted, much better than someone under the Imperius Curse, much better than someone blackmailed or forced: she was going to surrender to him willingly and he wasn't going to leave her the time to realize what she was doing.  
Before dawn, Hermione Granger was going to belong to him, tied in a way that nobody, not even Albus Dumbledore, would have been able to dissolve. 

He quickly disposed of his shirt and trousers, while the witch looked at him like she finally collected the nerve to listen to her own desire. He ground hard against her, not caring about hurting her but being careful enough to keep her on the good side of pain. He  _had_ to be careful, he had to play it on the edge or she could still retreat and ruin everything.

He brought her hand to his lips, not allowing her to avert her gaze from his, and he slowly opened his mouth, taking just the tip of her index finger between his teeth. With the tip of his tongue, he caressed the length of her digit, down to where it joined with the next one, then he guided her hand on his neck, on his chest, tracing his sternum down until the trade of pale hair under his navel.  
He felt her breath hitch when he guided her hand on his erection, still covered by his underwear, and he gripped her a little more tightly, with his hand and his gaze.

“Touch me, Hermione...”

He saw the flash of shyness in her eyes, just before she averted her eyes.  
He guided her hand, delicately, but firmly, until she started stroking him by herself, with uncertain movements that grew more confident as he let her see how that affected him, moving with her against her tiny hand, letting his breath come out in a soft growl.  
He had to move this on, he didn't want to wait any longer, but he knew he had to be careful not to spoil everything.  
  
He rolled them over, guiding her to straddle him, and she almost fell, unbalanced for a second, then smiled shyly before diving in for a kiss that almost took his control away.

He moved his hands behind her back, down her spine and he felt her shiver when he cupped her buttocks and squeezed, gripping her tight to push and grind against her.  
She was almost gone, now, almost ready, and he looked at her for a moment, wondering if anyone had ever seen her in such a state before. No, she was new at this, he was sure, and she was enjoying the game: her cheeks were tinted, her hair was wild, falling all around her like the mane of a lion. He gripped those hair with calculated cruelty and he heard her gasp just before her brought her down on him for another kiss, one that became almost a bite, one that she reciprocated without hesitation.

He rolled her over once more, and before settling on top of her, her freed her of her trousers and knickers with one fluid movement. He didn't leave her the time to look at him too much, not this time, not while his erection was straining against his underwear and he knew he looked like everything but a patient lover. 

He grasped her hair once more and exposed her neck, trailing small kisses and bites - careful bites, just grazing her skin enough to make her gasp – along her neck and shoulders, until he reached her breasts, her nipples already hard and dark, rising to meet his mouth.

He felt her moan louder this time, then shiver, and then freeze completely, like under a spell, when he put his hand between her legs.  
  
  
  


  
  


 

Hermione froze, petrified and suddenly hyper aware of every single part of her body, especially the one he was touching now, slowly circling his fingerpads on the apex of her sex.  
His hand moved carefully, but surely, making her jerk involuntarily, she felt like it was too much and not nearly enough at the same time.  
His fingers were moving closer and closer to her opening, while his thumb kept on circling her clitoris, making a mess of her thoughts, not letting her the time to finish one before starting another.

  
 _I can't be really doing this... Can't... YES! Oh Merlin, please... Oh... no, I have to... I have to stop him, I can't... Can't... He's... Oh god! What am I do..._      
Her orgasm hit her without a warning, making her cry out, while she felt the intrusion of his fingers barely teasing at her entrance, mixing a slight discomfort with pleasure, making her loose the distinction between the two. She felt her head hit the carpet and she let go of all her limbs, of all her will, riding the wave of sensation until the end.

She opened her eyes to find Lucius looking down at her, with those cold eyes now filled with something burning and most definitively dangerous, she could see that, but she really didn't care.

While the last shivers of her release left her, she saw him bend to kiss her breasts, taking her nipples between his teeth and pulling, just a little, while his fingers kept on playing with her over sensitized sex.  
She wanted him to stop, she wanted to ask him to stop, just for a while, but she was feeling like she was floating, and she couldn't speak or move, not yet. She barely registered him shifting his weight and position himself at her entrance, but she tensed as soon as she realized what was going to happen.

“Wait...” she managed to say, before she was cut out by his kiss, drinking her protest away.

“Granger... Hermione...” he was looking at her, waiting. He was waiting for her to give a sign, any sign. “Do you want this?”  
  
Hermione felt her insides melt. He was asking her.  
She could stop, now. He would have stopped.  
There was nothing to be afraid of. He would have understood, he was waiting and he cared, even if just a little bit.  
And now that she had the time to come back to her own head for a moment, she knew she wanted to stop.  
She was going to ask him to stop, to let her go, to wait, to give her time. It was too much and too fast.  
She could feel the words forming on her lips _“No, please, stop..”_ and then all the wise considerations she had always heard about sex, about haste, about... this.

She felt her lips part, felt the syllable form on her tongue, felt him waiting, straining to hold himself, she felt her breath come out and she just said “Yes!”  
  
She barely had the time to be shocked by her own answer, because he gripped her tight and entered her in one hard, unmerciful movement.

  
Her breath was cut out and for a long moment she couldn't feel anything but pain, burning, stretching, something that made her think fast, so very fast and lucidly for the first time in hours, but all she could think about was pain. Then, gradually but quickly, like waking up from a dream, she felt herself screaming and she came back to herself and to his mouth closing on hers, shutting down her cry.

He wasn't moving, he was just kissing her, and she felt tears run from her eyes to her cheek, while she stayed perfectly still. Then, almost involuntarily, she started to kiss him back.  
She wasn't feeling pain anymore, just a strange sensation of intrusion and heat, but the pain had gone, and she took a deep breath between kisses.  
The second breath was easier, she tried a third and she felt him move to kiss her cheeks and lick away her tears.  
He moved and she felt strange again, letting out a gasp and reaching out to his shoulders for something to hold on to. He kept moving, slowly, and she felt the sensation change, her body slowly opening up to take him a little deeper every time.

Then, without a warning, he thrust deep and hard and she braced herself for another stab of pain, but it didn't come. There was something new, between pleasure and pain, building inside of her, coiling at every movement he made. He was beginning to move with a steady rhythm, grinding his pelvis against her, sending sparks of electricity along her whole body, making her whimper every time he moved like that, making her start to try and meet his movement.  
  
Lucius kissed her so forcefully that he bit her, drawing blood from her lower lip, but instead of crying out or freezing, this time she kissed him as hard and forcefully, tasting her own blood on his lips, while her body moved with his, guided by instinct alone and by the pursuit of what she was feeling now building inside of her.

  
  


  
  
  


Lucius felt his mudblood start to dance with him, moving to the rhythm of that newly learnt pace. He heard her cry of pain and he felt like he was going to come just for that, just by the pride of tearing such a lovely sound from her throat. 

There was such a sweetness in that body, given so willingly and wantonly to him, the Deatheater, so guilty and so involved that just the immature mind of a half muggle could believe him to be a victim. It was so precious and so exhilarating that he was overwhelmed.  
He forgot every control and every consideration, sinking into the girl harder and harder, feeling her arch her back to meet him, feeling her shake and moan every time he hit her from the right angle. He could feel her coming closer, her walls starting to clench around him, sending waves of pleasure all over his body.  
  
“Hermione... Say it. Say my name!”  
  
She gasped for breath, swallowing repeatedly and failing to emit a single sound. He hit her hard once, twice, then kissed her fiercely, leaving her lips bloody once more. Her eyes were unfocused and he could feel his release rising up with her own, his thrusts became erratic and he just had the time to ask once more.  
“Say it, call my name, Hermione...”

 

  
  
She felt that coil of sensation inside her grow tighter, come closer, until it became too much and it exploded, hitting her like a curse, robbing her of everything and leaving her with only one word to shout, something to call and cry like a prayer, like a spell, like a name, just his name.  
“LUCIUS!”

  
  


He felt his triumph and her orgasm overwhelm him and he followed, sinking in the feeling of her crying out his name, spending himself inside her until he collapsed on top of her.

  
  


  
  


 

Hermione lay on the floor with her eyes closed. Her hair were plastered to her face, her shoulders, but she really didn't care. She could hear Lucius Malfoy breathing, lying on top of her, and she could feel his heart beating more and more regularly, while her own did the same.  
Everything was slowly drifting away, and what had shattered her bones and her mind, had turned her heart into fire, and erased her awareness was abandoning her, leaving her lucid but numb. It was strangely comforting, like warm butterbeer on a snowy afternoon.

She smiled, feeling him move from her, disentangling himself from her legs.  
It was done, whatever this was and whatever it meant, it was done.  
Before guilt and remorse could reach her, she basked for a moment in a feeling of deep satisfaction. She felt content and calm.

 

“Hermione...”  
  
 _Hermione_ , just Hermione from now on, she knew that. No more _Granger_ or _Mudblood_.  
  
Hermione.  
Just her name.  
And it sounded so good coming from those pale lips.  


  
“Hermione, I... I never though that you...”

That much was true. He never imagined that something like this could ever happen, nor that it would have been so immensely satisfying. Most of his enjoyment probably came from the knowledge of what he had in mind for the witch, beyond his silly bet with Nott, beyond this small victory, his mind had started to think of infinite ways of using her. She was so sweet, so willing to let him guide her and tell her what to see... She was going to become the perfect tool, and she was going to be his plaything as well.

  
But there was time for that, now it was the time for holding her, letting her catch her breath, calm down. It was time to wrap her into his arms, making he feel safe, peppering her shoulders with small innocent kisses, breathing her skin in, before talking, whispering, like he wasn't able to hold back.

  
“...that you could... but now, oh, please, Hermione, tell me this will happen again!”

She felt like she would have died without him coming back, she knew everything was going to change now. Everything was going to be so complicated, but all she wanted was for him to come to her and look at her like he was doing now. She wanted to stay there, where she was wanted, where she was crucial.

“Yes, I want it to happen again.” she replied.

  
  


He kissed her lightly, then whispered on her lips

“Tell me that you're mine, now...”

“Lucius...”

She let herself savour that moment, there, entangled with him on a bed of discarded clothes, on the floor... Evil was probably not evil anymore, but surely she was not as good and righteous as she always thought she was.

Everything was going to change, once again.

  
How long had she lied to herself? How many times had she toughened her armour, her mask of perfection and rationality, to hide every desire or emotion that got her scared of failing? And then this had happened, this moment had arrived and the only important question, the only one that made any sense, was...  _Do I really care?_  
  
He had no good intention, he was lying and pretending, and there was not even the smallest doubt about it.  
He wasn't going to hesitate in using her. He lied, he lied so beautifully and so fluidly, with the liquid ease of a snake, with lies so shiny and pretty you just begged to believe them, to believe him, his cold eyes and that deep voice, he was dangerous.  
  
They both lied, and it was a dangerous game, she was well aware, a deadly game.

_ Do I care? _   
_ I'm a pawn playing as bishop, now. _   
  
But that wasn't the question he had just asked her. 

_ Tell me you're mine. _

Hermione took a deep breath and closed her eyes. There was no point in lying to herself as well. No she wasn't going to do that, not anymore, not ever.

Was she playing the same game of Lucius Malfoy?  
 _Yes._  
Was she a real challenge for him?  
 _No. Not yet_.  
Was she able to learn, to become as dangerous, as deadly?  
 _Yes._  
Was she going to betray him, spy on him, give him up and condemn him, given the chance?  
 _Yes._  
But was she his?  
  
He had her reborn, like she was new to the world, without fear, without shame, he had been a new light, revealing her to her own self.

Of course she was, what else could she have been?  
  
“...yours.” 

  
  


In the corner of the room, the silver pommel of a walking stick flickered with a green light for an instant.  
Hermione didn't see it.  
Not that it mattered, anyway.  
  
“I won, Nott...”  
  
“What did you say?”  
  
“Nothing. Nothing at all, Hermione...” 

  
  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Aaaand it's done! Pheew! I really can't write smut, I'm afraid. 
> 
> Just a couple of notes: Hermione says 'god', while she talks to herself. Witches and Wizards don't usually use that, especially in fanon, but since she's been raised as a muggle, I think she would.  
> The alternated POV in this chapter was a bit of an hazard, I hope everything turned out understandable.  
> Since English is not my native language, I will gladly accept pointers and grammar corrections. And, yeah, I know my commas are wild... My English is also a mix of many influences, so if you find some britpicking improvement you want to suggest, I'm all ears!
> 
> Thank you!

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first proper fanfic I ever wrote and it was published in the main Italian archive, EFP.  
> I decided to translate it and to try to revamp it a bit, let's see if it gets better! ;)
> 
> As always, every note and every comment is welcome and if you notice typos, grammar errors or the need to britpick something, let me know, because this is mostly unbetaed.


End file.
